Dollhouse
by WordAddict618
Summary: She doesn't want to talk, but it's either this or continue to watch her sanity slowly keep crumbling, along with her family.


**A/N: Warnings: alcohol, drugs, and suicide trigger warnings.**

Pacifica stares at her phone, finger hovering over the call button, for far too long before finally giving in and tapping the screen.

She can hear her parent's voices in her head, _Pacifica Elise, you are a Northwest! Northwests do not run! Use your looks to your advantage. People will do anything for a pretty girl. We're rich. Rich people never explain, and always use all their resources._

Except, that wasn't true anymore, especially after what had happened at the end of summer. The Northwests weren't rich, weren't revered, and the image of perfection had shattered. Pacifica swallows hard, half-praying the call won't connect or if it does, that it'll go to an answering machine.

"Hi, it's Mabel!"

Pacifica sighs, almost cursing her luck. "Hi, Mabel, it's Pacifica." _Come on,_ she begs internally. _Yell, scream, tell me how awful I was to you, hang up on me because of all the terrible things I did._

"Oh, wow, it's been a while!" Mabel laughs, and Pacifica almost smiles at that, remembering the way Mabel looked when she was happy, how her nose wrinkled and her braces sparkled.

"Yeah, it has," Pacifica mutters, crossing her arms over her chest. She doesn't want to talk, but it's either this or continue to watch her sanity slowly keep crumbling, along with her family.

"Hey, is everything okay?" Mabel asks, her tone softening, in the way it always did when she really cared about someone and what their problems were.

 _Yes, everything's fine._ Pacifica says in her mind. "Not really," her mouth mumbles.

"Well, why don't you tell Mabel all about it?" Mabel says, and Pacifica smiles a little because she can hear rustling in the background, like Mabel's clearing out a spot on her bed among all her stuffed animals to sit and listen.

"Well, I – I," Pacifica starts, and then stops, because really she doesn't know where to start. After Weirdmageddon, when her father started blaming everyone for their family's loss of status? After the day when Pacifica had discovered the nearly-empty liquor cabinet and noticed how her mother smelled like too much perfume? After the day when she didn't know how to handle the anger and sadness and blame anymore and let it pour over a little too much?

"Just start talking," Mabel says. "Don't think, just talk," she adds philosophically.

Pacifica almost laughs at that, but she's frozen up again, the way she does whenever she hears a bell whether or not it's meant for her.

She takes a deep breath, opens her mouth, and lets it all out. How, after days of silence except for sharp commands from her father and slurred insults from her mother, she had let it spill over. How she had stared at herself in the mirror for what felt like forever, remembering all the reasons she couldn't be the perfect daughter. How, finally, she had decided if she couldn't be the perfect daughter, then maybe she shouldn't _be_ at all.

And then, tears running down her face, ruining her carefully applied makeup, Pacifica explains how she had chosen a bottle, read the label, and swallowed every pill inside, and the only reason she's still around is that evidently, she's not the only Northwest female with a wish to be not completely there.

When she finishes, the silence on the other end stretched on so long Pacifica wonders if Mabel hung up. She wouldn't blame her, it's not like she was obligated to sit there and listen to the story of the poor little rich girl who had everything she didn't.

"Oh, Paz," Mabel finally whispers. "I'm sorry."

Pacifica can't believe what she's just heard. Sorry for her? In what dimension did _Mabel Pines_ feel sorry for Pacifica Northwest?

She bites her tongue to keep old insults from spilling over. "Thank you," she says instead, silencing the voices in her head shouting at her that _Northwests do not apologize, everyone else apologizes to us. No one feels sorry for a Northwest, we feel sorry for everyone else._

"You should talk to someone," Mabel continues, "It's not good to keep all that yuck inside."

"Who am I going to talk to?" Pacifica snaps. "The town hates us, we're pariahs!"

She can hear Mabel chuckling on the other end, saying something about 'big words, just like Dipper' and she lets the sound of laughter wash over her, healing a little corner of her heart she hadn't even known wasn't whole.

There's silence on the other end for a moment, and then Mabel says, "You know who you should talk to?" in the tone that makes Pacifica imagine her tapping her chin with one finger, the way she did whenever she was seconds away from prescribing a fix for something.

"Who?" Pacifica asks, unable to stop herself. As unappealing as the suggestion Mabel had probably was, it was undoubtedly better than sitting in her bedroom, listening to drunken fighting and snide accusations being thrown back and forth. It had to be better than finding her mother on the couch and praying that she'll wake up, because the alternative is only slightly more horrifying.

"You're probably not going to like this," Mabel rambles on, "Just promise me you'll try, okay, Paz?"

Pacifica feels heat rise in her cheeks at the nickname, and before she can stop herself, she blurts out, "Promise."

The next day, she's wondering what she got herself into, when she steps onto the porch of the Mystery Shack and rings the doorbell.


End file.
